Northwestern Athletics Reaches Out at Christmas
ST. PAUL -- The Northwestern College athletic department is reaching out to the community in different ways this Christmas season. Northwestern student-athletes have physically gone off site to assist those in need, while the institution is hosting a Salvation Army initiative on campus this week.
2011 marked the fourth consecutive year of Northwestern students helping with Christmas with Dignity, a program parented by Hospitality House Youth Development. After starting the program in 1993, Christmas with Dignity has grown every year. Here’s how it works: parents are invited to come to the Hospitality House headquarters in North Minneapolis and shop for Christmas gifts at approximately 10 percent of cost. The program offers a significant discount while allowing parents to leave with dignity that they still purchased the gifts for their children. Christmas with Dignity shoppers, who leave with a tract containing the gospel message, are required to present a birth certificate for each child that they have pre-registered a gift for. Once the pre-registration process is complete, each parent is assigned a time to come and shop at the Hospitality House store.
Gifts for Christmas with Dignity are donated by members of the public, including listeners of Praise FM radio, and companies such as Wal-Mart and Slumberland Furniture. Wal-Mart sends an entire semi-truck load of gifts, while Slumberland donated 50 complete bed sets including mattresses, sheets, quilts, etc. for families whom Hospitality House knows has children sleeping on the floor at night.
Members from each of Northwestern’s 18 varsity sports teams volunteered their time to assist with Christmas with Dignity. Much of the student-athletes’ time was spent at Straightgate Church in Minneapolis, where a lot of the prep work was done for the event. Volunteers unloaded trucks, stacked shelves, constructed larger toys such as basketball hoops, and packed stocking stuffers, which included shampoo, mirrors, and small food items donated by the Salvation Army.
Between 500 and 600 families shopped at Christmas with Dignity, which wrapped up last Friday.
Speaking of the Salvation Army, the non-profit agency perhaps known best by its red kennels and bell ringers stationed outside retail and grocery stores, Northwestern is helping “do the most good” on campus this week. Northwestern offered the Ericksen Center, which includes the athletics gymnasium and several classrooms, for the Salvation Army’s annual Toy Shop.
In past years, the Salvation Army has brought its operation to the St. Paul armory. This year, the armory is being renovated, so the Salvation Army had to look elsewhere for its Christmas store. Following Saturday evening’s women’s basketball game, the Ericksen Center gym, racquetball courts and hallways were piped, draped and tarped and Northwestern was ready to take its already-strong partnership with the Salvation Army to another level.
Room was readily available in the Ericksen Center for host and registration tables, a holding tank for shoppers, check-in and check-out, shoppers assistants, volunteer training and food, and stocking. The gymnasium is split, with a portion separated for shopping, while the other half has a warehouse feel with thousands of boxed toys and gifts ready to make their way on to the shopping tables and eventually into carts.
Much of the Salvation Army’s approach to its Toy Shop is the same as Christmas with Dignity, with a few exceptions and on a larger scale. Shoppers are able to pick up gifts, many of which come from Toys for Tots, for free and leave the building with a bible in hand. By the time the Salvation Army shop opened for business at 9 a.m. on Monday, a long line of shoppers had already formed outside the building’s front doors. When the toy shop closes at 8 p.m. on Friday, 4,500 shoppers will have come and gone.
“Many Christmas gift programs hand a gift to parents based on their child’s gender and age without the parent having the option to choose their present,” says Dave Halstensgard, Northwestern’s Director of Athletics Special Projects and the department’s liaison for the two outreach projects. “Giving people the power to choose a gift or two to give their son or daughter brings class and dignity to these programs.”
At the Salvation Army Toy Shop, parents are able to leave with one large or two small toys per child. Stocked items include table and yard games, dolls and stuffed animals, crayons, tennis racquets, hair driers and camping tents. The Toy Shop at Northwestern is just one of seven in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.
Corporate America is present in the Salvation Army’s initiative as well. Employees from Best Buy and Target help comprise the 150 volunteers needed per shift, of which there are three each day. 98 percent of the Salvation Army’s Toy Shops are staffed by volunteers.
“Both of these initiatives are great programs and we’re proud to come alongside them, whether with physical help or providing a building for them to operate out of,” commented Halstensgard. “Helping with Christmas with Dignity and the Salvation Army Toy Shop are tangible ways for Christians to reach out and touch people and their children, giving love, care and concern. We’re very happy to partner with both organizations and their efforts.”